Gary Lucas INTERVIEW (US, ex-Captain Beefheart)

Gary Lucas, dubbed “the guitarist with 1,000 ideas” by The New York Times, claims to have “learned more at Beefheart U. than at Yale.”

He made his reputation with the “Magic Band,” led by the oddball, Frank Zappa-like, rock hero Captain Beefheart, who used to say: “I don’t make music, I make monsters.”

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Gary Lucas emphasizes his overview: “The secret of success is just showing up.” During his five years, 1979 to 1984, as the Captain Beefheart guitar-slinger, Lucas assumed the additional duties of manager with Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.

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Eventually the good Captain broke the band up because he was not being taken seriously enough as a professional painter, which he wanted to become. Don Van Vliet tried to persuade Lucas to manage his new career. “Man, we’ll both have yachts,” he said. The guitarist replied: “I’m proud to have played music with you but I’m not going to be your art pimp.”

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As copywriter and promotion man at “Black Rock” — a dark-glass high rise on Sixth Avenue that served as Columbia Records’ headquarters in New York, he “masterminded the Beefheart phenomenon. His superiors were happy to let him moonlight on guitar with Beefheart at night and on weekends and even on work-days because it lent the record company “credibility on the street.”

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In 1989, he wrote music for the classic German expressionist silent film The Golem.

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In the summer of 1991, Jeff Buckley, son of the folksinger Tim became his singer. They cut demos and performed together. Buckley wrote lyrics to Lucas’s guitar song “Grace.” …

Gary Lucas spent the remainder of the ’90s touring from Japan to Slovenia and Corsica by way of Israel, including a package called JAM, “Jewish Avant Garde Music”.

Gary Lucas worked on studio projects in London, Scandinavia and Paris — another case of “foreigners” recognizing an overlooked American talent.

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“I know every nook and cranny of Germany, but the U.S. is still virgin territory.”

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This week, Gary Lucas gets to know Cluj-Napoca, capital of Transylvania.

We did an email interview with the New Yorker prior to his two shows at the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF 2010).

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The Beefheart Years

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CZB: How did you meet Don Van Vliet and what impression did he leave on you?
Gary Lucas: I first saw him perform when I came down from New Haven, Connecticut where I was a Freshman at Yale University to see Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band‘s live debut in NYC at a little club in early 1971, and it definitely changed my life! They were so fantastic and inspiring, I vowed to myself that if I ever played with band professionally in the future that that was the band I wanted to join! I met Don Van Vliet the following year when he came up to Yale to do a concert, and he was really charismatic and very playful, with a mind that leaped all over the place making Joycean puns and allusions and observations that struck me as quite profound and magical. He was a total artist, and incredibly powerful–I’ve never met anyone else quite like him to this day.
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CZB: What motivated you to stick to Don Van Vliet for five years and be able to manage him by his rules?

Gary Lucas: Well, I loved the guy–and felt that he had been tragically overlooked as a progenitor and inspiration behind both punk rock and its later manifestations (new wave and experimental rock) — he was a prime over and seminal figure who was just not getting his due and his audience, so I was on a mission to expose the world to his genius music. And I feel I quite succeeded, insofar as he received massive publicity for the last 2 albums he put out on Virgin which I played on. I got him on the cover of Musician Magazine, featured in Rolling Stone and even People Magazine, and on the popular American TV shows Saturday Night Live and the David Lettermen Show. I hooked up his last record deal with Virgin/Epic for Ice Cream for Crow, and through my efforts enabled him to make the Ice Cream for Crow video, which is in the permanent video collection of the Museum of Modern Art here in NYC. And I hooked up with the artist Julian Schnabel and the influential Mary Boone Gallery in NY and the Michael Werner Gallery in Koln for representation as a painter when he wanted to leave music in 1982. It wasn’t easy, all this, so in 1984 I resigned as his manager when I determined that he was just not interested in recording again — we could have made another album for Virgin, but he was just sick of the music biz, and wanted to focus on painting only. And as I had joined to play his music, I moved on with my life and my own career. But I am extremely proud of the work I did for him and I am honored to have played with him — I learned so much under his tutelage.

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CZB: What was your reaction when the Ice Cream for Crow video (1982) was rejected by MTV for being “too weird”?

Gary Lucas: Astonishment and anger at their short-sighted-ness and stupidity.
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CZB: Having worked in an anti-trend spirited band… how did it feel to collaborate with trendy names afterwards?

Gary Lucas: I am not a snob or a musical purist, and I appreciate all sorts of different musicians and their particular artistry. It’s a big world out there. So I was happy to broaden my horizons beyond the avant-ghetto, and was honored to receive recognition for my playing by other artists.
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The Music Career

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CZB: You play on three guitars on tour: 1926 National steel, 1946 Gibson J-45, and 1966 Fender Stratocaster. Is it a coincidence that they were each built 20 years apart? Do you have nicknames for them?

Gary Lucas: That’s funny, I never noticed that! I am only taking 2 of them on the road these days in fact. No nicknames, sorry.
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CZB: The week you’ll be in Cluj, soundtrack music composed by you will feature at a further two movie festivals (Miami and Seattle). How much time of the year do you spend touring out of your country and where do you consider “home away from home” is right now for you, spiritually?

Gary Lucas: I haven’t counted the days, but I reckon its 3-4 months a year — and I wish it was more! I love to go on the road and travel to play music for interested folks, I feel completed as a person doing this, I feel born into it. When someone comes up to me after a show and tells me they were in a bad mood but decided to come out and hear me play, and then thank me for putting them in a good mood — wow!! What an incredible feeling that is, to feel you’ve done something to cheer other people makes the whole thing — with all the related economic pressures and stresses — see, worthwhile. It makes me feel like I was born for a purpose, you know. What more can you ask from life? Most people hate what they do, I love what I do. I was given a gift as a player, and I hope to share this gift as a performing artist to play for as many folks as possible in my lifetime. That’s what I feel I was put on earth to do. But as Ringo sang, “You know it don’t come easy…” I hope to keep expanding my audience and be able to keep playing as a working musician the rest of my days. Spiritually, as Captain Beefheart sang, “my head is my only house unless it rains“. Sure I love to play in Amsterdam, Prague, Paris, St. Petersburg, Havana (I made my performing debut there last year at the Havana Film Festival) and so many other beautiful cities, but really I am happy wherever I find like-minded people to play for, who enjoy my work. Like in Cluj, hopefully!
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CZB: Is there anything specific from Jewish Scripture or teachings that has helped guide you on your path?

Gary Lucas: Well, I took Religious Studies once a week for 12 years and was bar-mitzvah-ed and confirmed by my temple growing up, and I respect it all. But I must say, although I sincerely revere and respect the great Jewish thinkers, rabbis and philosophers such as Maimonides, particularly for their sense of ethics and humanistic outlook, for me it’s the overall Jewish world view based on the gift of ironic empathetic humor that permeates the communal tradition and culture that forged my soul , rather than any specific religious instruction I received as a Reform Jew growing up.

Check out this interview I did for an Israeli based Jewish leadership site where I talk about this specifically Jewish sense of irony:

I also have inherited alot of the questioning rebellious, idol smashing spirit that…

My other favorite Jewish teaching inspiration that has helped guide me over the years comes from from my all time favorite artist, Bob Dylan: the line “He not busy being born is being dying” — from his song “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” — there are so many truths in the lyrics to that one song if you care to examine them all. In a rather dark and stark musical setting, it describes various modern pitfalls and traps and snares but overall expresses a sincere optimism in the need for continual growth and change, and also urges and advises the listener to keep going and continue seeking one’s chosen destiny against all odds . And that is the history of the Jewish people, in a nutshell.
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Personal stuff

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CZB: Is Halloween your favorite Holiday? What is one strong childhood memory you have abut All-Hallows-Eve?

Gary Lucas: Yes it is, or rather, it was when I was a boy… now it’s so commercialized out of all proportion. But my favorite memory as a boy was creating a tape of musique concrete with my best friend Walter Horn, who later collaborated with me on our score for the silent film The Golem, to play loudly, hidden away from various trick or treaters who came round my house — in order to try and frighten them! And we succeeded, many of them ran away with their tails between their legs, as if they had seen a ghost… heard a ghost, more accurately.

http://garylucas.com/www/golem

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CZB: Could you name a couple of songs you love to listen to when the full moon is out on a Halloween Night?

Gary Lucas:

• Dinner with Drac, the single by John The Cool Ghoul Zacherly
• Spooktacular in Stereo by Spike Jones — the entire album
• and Drop Dead!, Arch Oboler‘s album of weird old radio plays

• but my favorite horror soundtrack of all time is Bernard Herrmann‘s Music from “Psycho” — in fact, I am going to play the main theme at my Cinefantastique concert at the Zorki Club on June 2nd.

www.garylucas.com

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CZB: Working on Golem (a possible inspiration for the first Frankenstein movie) and the Spanish Dracula movie, how do you feel about traveling to Cluj, the capital of Transylvania (the heartland for quite a few horror stories) for the first time in your life?

Gary Lucas: It is a total thrill and a total honor for me!! I can’t wait to play there.

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